On Blame and Punishment: Self-Blame, Other-Blame, and Normative Negligence
In: Law and Philosophy: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-021-09436-4
In: Law and Philosophy: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-021-09436-4
SSRN
Working paper
In: Africa research bulletin. Political, social and cultural series, Band 34, Heft 5, S. 12689
ISSN: 0001-9844
In: Renewal: politics, movements, ideas ; a journal of social democracy, Band 20, Heft 2-3, S. 66-68
ISSN: 0968-252X
In: European journal of political research: official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research, Band 62, Heft 1, S. 221-238
ISSN: 1475-6765
AbstractThe delegation of governance tasks to third parties is generally assumed to help governments to avoid blame once policies become contested. International organizations, including the European Union (EU), are considered particularly opportune in this regard. The literature lacks assessments of the blame avoidance effects of delegation, let alone of the effects of different delegation designs. To address this gap in the literature, we study public blame attributions in the media coverage of two contested EU policies during the financial crisis and the migration crisis. We show that the blame avoidance effect of delegation depends on the delegation design: When agents are independent (dependent) of government control, we observe lower (higher) shares of public blame attributions targeting the government (blame shifting effect), and when agents are external (internal) to the government apparatus, overall public blame attributions for a contested policy will be less (more) frequent (blame obfuscation effect). Our findings yield important normative implications for how to maintain governments' accountability once they have delegated governance tasks to third parties.
In his eye-opening book Why?, world-renowned social scientist Charles Tilly exposed some startling truths about the excuses people make and the reasons they give. Now he's back with further explorations into the complexities of human relationships, this time examining what's really going on when we assign credit or cast blame. Everybody does it, but few understand the hidden motivations behind it. With his customary wit and dazzling insight, Tilly takes a lively and thought-provoking look at the ways people fault and applaud each other and themselves. The stories he gathers in Credit and Bl
In: Public affairs quarterly: PAQ ; philosophical studies of public policy issues, Band 34, Heft 2, S. 169-184
ISSN: 2152-0542
Abstract
Blame skeptics argue that we have strong reason to revise our blame practices because humans do not fulfill all the conditions for it being appropriate to blame them. This paper presents a new challenge for this view. Many have objected that blame plays valuable roles such that we have strong reason to hold on to our blame practices. Skeptics typically reply that non-blaming responses to objectionable conduct, like forms of disappointment, can serve the positive functions of blame. The new challenge is that skeptics need to show that it can be appropriate (or less inappropriate) to respond with this kind of disappointment to people's conduct if it is inappropriate to respond with blame. The paper argues that current blame-skeptical views fail to meet this challenge.
In: Policing: a journal of policy and practice, Band 18
ISSN: 1752-4520
Abstract
Policing is a job characterised by high levels of blame risk, with the notion of blame becoming particularly prominent feature in law enforcement in recent years, with organisations often being quick to identify other external bodies as being cognisant in perpetuating this problem. This paper investigates the extent to which fear of blame exists within policing organisations, as well as the techniques utilised by staff to neutralise this particular hazard. I will utilise Hood's concept of 'the blame game' to investigate such techniques and will also outline how engaging in such games leads the organisation and its staff to pit themselves against one another by engaging in framing contests designed to shift the blame away from themselves onto other individuals within the organisation. This paper thus examines the extent to which policing organisations themselves perpetuate blaming practises and preserve the never-ending cycle of blame by engaging in such processes.
SSRN
In: Governance: an international journal of policy and administration, Band 33, Heft 4, S. 953-969
ISSN: 1468-0491
AbstractWho blames whom in multilevel blame games? Existing research focuses either on policymakers' preferences or their opportunities offered by the institutional structures in which policymakers operate. As these two strands of literature barely refer to each other, in this article we develop an integrated theoretical model of blame‐shifting in multilevel governance systems and assess it empirically. In line with the first strand, we assume that policymakers have a preference for shifting blame onto actors on a different level from themselves. In line with the second, we suppose that opportunities for doing so depend on institutional responsibility for policymaking and policy implementation. We check the plausibility of our integrated model by examining policymakers' blame attributions in three cases where European Union migration policies have been contested: border control, asylum, and welfare entitlements. We find that our integrated model does better in explaining blame‐shifting in these cases than the isolated models.
In: FP, Heft 196
ISSN: 0015-7228
The global economic blame game is reaching a crescendo as Americans go to the polls and Europeans approach critical decision points. And everyone -- from economists to central bankers, from television analysts to the person on the street -- seems to have a favorite scapegoat for Europe's recession and debt crisis, for America's feeble recovery and its recurrent political fiscal dramas, for dangerously high youth unemployment in a surprising member of countries, and for China's sudden economic slowdown. But four years into the global economic malaise that has followed the 2008 crash, the endless recriminations are more than just academic. Banks are at the top of most lists of bad guys. Enamored with the textbook characterization of efficient, unfettered capitalism and well-functioning markets, regulators gave the banks an enormous amount of rope with which to hang themselves. Instead of a blame game, people need a cooperative game. Adapted from the source document.
Blog: UCL Uncovering Politics
This week we're looking at injustice and the role that blame should play in tackling it.
In: European psychologist, Band 12, Heft 3, S. 235-237
ISSN: 1878-531X